


This is Eighteen

by My_Write_Life



Category: Stranger Things - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Didn’t have a Beta, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 10:16:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17160167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Write_Life/pseuds/My_Write_Life
Summary: On a Saturday night in ‘83 the world goes to shit. It isn’t demodogs or interdemnsional demons that are to blame. It starts with a man stumbling out of the woods and walking straight into a group of campers and from there it spreads. By Sunday morning there are more of them than people. Stay in doors, the news channels say but anyone with any sort of sense knows when to get out.By Sunday night Hawkins goes silent.This is messy but was fun to write. Enjoy.





	1. Sunday 7:45 AM

Everything went to hell on a Sunday morning and despite Billy usually being a bit of a drama queen and usually proclaiming that everyday in Hawkins was hell this particular Sunday he wasn’t actually wrong. He wakes up in a strange mood, a feeling in his lower belly a strange sort of anxiety takes hold of him the moment he wakes up belly down in bed. His eyes popping open, like waking from a nightmare, none of the dregs of tiredness from sleep cling to Billy at all. He startles away and feels dread.

Maybe its the strange silence in the house, he doesn’t hear Susan in the kitchen chittering away at the phone, he doesn’t hear Max stomping along the house complaining or whining about something but, when he sits up and rubs the back of his neck in an attempt to ease the anxiety, he remembers that Susan and Max were in Minnesota visiting Susan’s folks leaving Billy and Neil all on their own. While Neil isn’t exactly a loud person, thus Billy is used to not hearing him on the rare days both Susan and Max aren’t home, there is never an absence of self in the house. Its like nothing exists in the four bedroom house apart from Billy, a stagnant sort of silence that feels terrifyingly oppressive.

He dresses quickly and tiptoes into into the bathroom to quickly brush his teeth and comb his messy hair that has thankfully begun to grow out and curl at his lobes. Neil hadn’t been kidding about punishing Billy for causing trouble and had taken scissors to Billy’s hair three months before. Billy hates his short hair but it does make him look good, the curls are light and soft, curling around his head like a halo and the length of it makes his face a bit sharper, his eyes look bigger and bluer somehow. The girls like it more than his mullet, who knew?

After giving himself a wink Billy turns toward the bathroom door and the anxiety crawls back up his spine and makes him shiver at its return. He sneaks out of the bathroom and makes his way back into his bedroom. Billy tucks his feet into his boots, grabs his denim jacket and pockets his wallet. Its time to face the silence of the house and so he does, walking slowly out of his bedroom to see nothing in the living room, checks the kitchen and the other bedrooms, his fathers room locked.

Neil never locks his door.

Billy tells himself that it means nothing, that maybe Neil had locked by accident or maybe it was something new that he was doing. Why not? Susan was always home whenever Neil wasn’t and now she was gone. Maybe Neil thought that Billy would go snooping around. As if the old man had anything Billy wanted. What a joke.

Billy makes himself some breakfast, leans against the counter as he turns on the small TV Susan insisted on having in the kitchen and frowns at MTV which is...not MTV. The news is on, the anchorman looks pale a wane as he stares glassy eyed at the camera, his tie loosened, the sleeves of his staunch shirt folded up to the elbow. Billy changes the channel, does it again and again and its the same, new anchor man but the exact same terror marring their faces. He decides to listen to what they had to say and at the end of it he wishes that he had somehow never woken up.

“What the fuck..?” He places his empty bowl into the sink, it clinks against the metal tub at the same time a loud and terrifying thump is heard in the direction of the bedrooms.

Thump.

Thump.

**Thump.**

He goes for the fireplace where an ornate bowl, the one Neil insisted on specifically for everyone’s keys, sits ignoring as the thumping gets louder and louder with each passing second. Billy expects to see only his set of keys gleaming up at him from the bowl but what he finds are his keys and Neil’s.

Billy turns back in the direction of the thumping, his heart beating in time with the sound, ringing loudly in his ears. He gets a little lightheaded thinking...but what if...what if it was-

If what the news is saying is true then didn’t that mean..?

Billy packs himself a duffle of clothes, takes cans of food, a can opener, fills jugs of water. He packs provisions enough to trick himself into feeling...steadier. Not safer just steady. Billy looks about the house ignoring the thumping and grabs his fathers keys. The Ramcharger might take more on gas but it carried more than the Camaro and besides that Neil always had a few canteens filled with extra gas in the back shed anyway. Billy makes quick work of packing them away, paranoid and terrified as he does it.

When Billy drives away he glances at his car and the house growing smaller in his rear view and rather then do as the news said, to stay in doors and to stay quiet, he drives off without and ounce of regret. Nothing in that house had ever been safe before, why would it be safe now?

 


	2. Saturday 11:53 PM

11:53 PM Saturday

Neil Hargrove knows something is wrong the moment Calvert Young comes ambling out of the woods clutching his arm and breathing heavy. Of course he’s having a heart attack, the round pudgy bastard had no business being out of the comfy confines of his house or off his cushy armchair away from his television. But Calvert had wanted to be one of the guys, had been hit with a rare sort of enthusiasm that overrode his need for food and general laziness brought on by a heavy work week where all he did was sit behind a desk and talk on the phone making sales.

“Just hold still, damn it.” Neil eases Calvert back on one of the uncomfortable chairs that Preston, one of the few real friends Neil had made in town, had insisted on bringing along. Neil’s eyes catch Preston’s green eyes worriedly as Calvert’s breathing begins to slow, his skin clamming up.

No good, if they wait any longer to get Calvert into the van they might not make it to a hospital in time to save him. Neil turns to the rest of the group, Gerald Whitey and Vernon Wright, two large boned, broad shouldered mechanics, shaking as they pack up camp, and addresses them with as much authority as he can muster.

“Forget the camp we’ve gotta get Calvert to a hospital.”

They do just that, loading Calvert into the van and driving off into the dark night too worried about the dying man in the back to care about the camping gear they’ve left behind. It doesn’t do anyone any good no matter how fast they tried to get Calvert to safety, by the time they reach Hawkins Memorial Calvert is a thrashing crazed mess and Neil and Preston are in need of a few stitches.

* * *

It’s near two in the morning by the time Neil gets home with itchy stitches on his aching shoulder and the worst migraine he’s ever had. Neil stumbles up the stoop steps and gives a grimace at the unlocked door but doesn’t have the energy to bang on Billy’s door. Besides, it isn’t like Hawkins Indiana is teaming with burglars anyway. 

He makes it to his bedroom and falls straight into bed trying no to think about Calvert Young who’d been in pain but undoubtedly himself before he _wasn’t_ and who’d taken a good chunk out of Neil and Preston when they’d tried to get him to calm down.

* * *

 

Neil doesn’t sleep. His body aches, his stitches burn, his brain feels like it’s boiling in his skull. It takes several times for Neil to sit up and when he does it takes every bit of strength in him not to fall back. He wants to call for Billy, needs a glass of cool water and some pain medication but his mouth doesn’t quite work enough to form any coherent words.

He stands up slowly, his vision goes dizzy and he stumbles to his door, leaning against his as he grabs the cold metal door knob.

He thinks of Calvert just before he went quiet and before he woke up, how he’d been cool and clammy, dizzy and incoherent. Something like dread sits heavy in Neil’s gut and he wonders if it was a heart attack at all. Maybe it was rabies? Maybe Calvert was bitten by something in the woods that gave him rabies and he’d infected Neil when he bit him. And Preston! Preston went home to his wife and kids, what would happen to them?

Neil locks his bedroom door and stumbles back to his bed, lying flat on his back to stare at the white of his ceiling before everything goes black.

It’s four forty five in the morning


End file.
